A few years ago, I wrote about the idea of work-life harmony.
At the time, I was pushing back on "work-life balance" — this notion that somehow, if we manage things just right, we can put work on one side of the scale and life on the other and keep everything perfectly balanced.
I still don't believe that. But I think I had the order wrong.
Life/work harmony.
Life and work. Not life versus work. Not life or work. And maybe not even life before work.
Work is part of life. And life is part of work.
That's why, these days, I think about life/work harmony.
Balance was probably never the goal
There are times when work demands more of us. A new job. A big project. Starting a company. A crisis that needs our attention.
There are other times when other parts of life rightfully take the lead. Raising kids. Caring for family. Traveling. Pursuing something we love. Taking care of ourselves. Or simply being present for people who matter to us.
Trying to make those things "balance" every day is exhausting — and probably impossible.
Harmony gives us more room.
Think about music. Every instrument doesn't play at the same volume for the entire song. Sometimes the guitar takes the lead. Sometimes it's the piano. Sometimes the best thing an instrument can do is go quiet for a few measures.
The goal isn't equality. It's making the whole thing work together.
Harmony makes room for and.
I can care deeply about my work and be present for my family. I can be ambitious and make room to breathe. I can build something and spend time doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with building anything.
One doesn't have to diminish the other. Life is like that, too.
We bring our whole selves with us
For a long time, the professional world encouraged us to compartmentalize.
Leave your personal life at home. Come to work. Be professional. Do your job.
Except humans don't actually work that way.
We bring our families, our health, our worries, our excitement, our ambitions, our heartbreak, our curiosity, and whatever happened five minutes before the meeting into the room with us.
And it works in the other direction, too. A great day at work can energize everything else in our lives. A miserable one can follow us through the front door.
Life is part of work. Work is part of life.
Pretending otherwise doesn't make us more professional. It makes us less human.
I've become much more interested in what happens when we don't.
The song changes
This may be the biggest way my thinking has changed since I first wrote about work-life harmony.
Harmony isn't something we figure out once. The composition changes.
I've had seasons when my career deserved an enormous amount of my energy. I've had others when family needed more. And I've learned that sometimes the answer isn't simply turning one part up or another part down.
Sometimes you realize you're ready to play a different song.
That can mean changing how you work. What you work on. Who you work with. What you make time for outside of work. Or even reconsidering things that once felt essential to who you were.
That's not necessarily imbalance.
It might be growth.
The challenge is paying enough attention to recognize the difference.
Leaders are part of the harmony
I still believe something strongly from the original article: leaders have an enormous influence on whether people can find harmony in their lives.
We can't create it for them. But we can make room for it.
That starts with remembering that the person sitting across from us — or appearing in a little square on our screen — is a human being before they're an employee.
They have people they love. Things they're worried about. Dreams that have nothing to do with us. Talents we may never see at work. Parts of their story we know nothing about.
And sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can do is acknowledge that.
Give someone flexibility when life demands it. Ask the extra question. Notice when something seems off. Celebrate something that matters to them even when it has nothing to do with their job.
Those aren't distractions from leadership. They're part of it.
Purpose is bigger than work
I care deeply about my work. Maybe more than ever.
I love building things. Solving problems. Working with interesting people. Exploring new ideas. Trying things that haven't been tried before.
Those things give me purpose, relationships, challenge, and creativity.
And so does the rest of my life.
The people I love. The places I go. The things I create. The things I learn. The things I do for no productive reason whatsoever.
Purpose doesn't belong to our jobs. Work can be a meaningful expression of it. So can a hundred other things.
And maybe that's what I've learned since I first wrote about harmony.
The goal isn't to build a perfectly balanced life. It's to build one where the pieces belong together — even as those pieces, and their importance, continue to change.
Balance asks us to choose. Harmony gives us room for "and."
Sometimes work will be loud. Sometimes family will. Sometimes something entirely new will enter the song.
Pay attention. Make adjustments.
And every once in a while, ask yourself whether you're still playing the song you want to be playing.
